A general election was held in Spain on 14 March 2004 to elect the members of the 8th under the Spanish Constitution of 1978. All 350 seats in the Congress of Deputies were up for election, as well as 208 of 259 seats in the Senate. It was held concurrently with a regional election in Andalusia.
Since 2000, the ruling People's Party (PP) had governed with a parliamentary absolute majority, allowing it to renegue from its previous agreements with peripheral nationalist parties. This period saw sustained economic growth, but the controversial management—and, at times, attempted cover-up—of a number of crises affected the standing of Aznar's government and fostered perceptions of arrogance: these included the Gescartera affair, the Prestige oil spill and the Yak-42 plane crash. A reform of unemployment benefits led to a general strike in 2002, and the unpopular decision to intervene in the Iraq War sparked massive protests across Spain. The incumbent prime minister, José María Aznar, renounced to seek a third term at the 2002 party congress, being replaced as candidate by the first deputy prime minister, Mariano Rajoy. The opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) elected José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as new leader in July 2000, under a platform of party renewal. The fight against terrorism (particularly from the Basque separatist ETA group) and the need for political change were themes that dominated party campaigns going into the election.
The electoral outcome was heavily influenced by the Madrid train bombings on 11 March, which saw Aznar's government blaming ETA for the attacks in spite of mounting evidence suggesting Islamist authorship. The ruling PP was accused by the opposition of staging a disinformation campaign to prevent the blame on the bombings being linked to Spain's involvement in Iraq. Election results saw Zapatero's PSOE securing an unprecedented 11 million votes, with a net gain of 39 seats up to 164, whereas the PP (which had been predicted by opinion polls to secure a diminished but still commanding victory) was left in shock as it unexpectedly lost 35 seats in the worst defeat for a sitting Spanish government up to that point since 1982. Republican Left of Catalonia benefitted from the impact of the Carod affair—the revelation that party leader Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira had held a meeting with ETA shortly after joining the regional government of Pasqual Maragall—which gave the party publicity to the detriment of Convergence and Union. The 75.7% voter turnout was among the highest since the Spanish transition to democracy and was attributed to public shock and grief caused by the Madrid attacks, with no subsequent general election having exceeded such figure. The number of votes cast, at 26.1 million votes, remained the highest figure in gross terms for any Spanish election until April 2019.
The results were described by some media as an "unprecedented electoral upset". Perceived PP abuses and public rejection at Spain's involvement in Iraq were said to help fuel a wave of discontent against the incumbent ruling party, with Aznar's mismanagement of the 11M bombings serving as the final catalyst for change to happen. Zapatero announced his will to form a minority PSOE government, seeking the parliamentary support of other parties once elected.
Background
The People's Party (PP) secured an absolute majority of seats for the first time ever in the 2000 general election, which allowed José María Aznar to be re-elected for a second term as prime minister of Spain. The defeat of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) prompted the resignation of party leader Joaquín Almunia and a leadership contest being triggered. A dark horse candidate, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, emerged as new leader in a surprise victory over the president of Castilla–La Mancha, José Bono, by adhering to a "New Way" position that proposed party renewal and internal reform.
With a low unemployment under Spanish standards and the country's economy growing at a steady pace, Aznar's second government continued its liberalization policy in a wide range of activities (including sectors previously subject to state monopoly), as well as the completion of the privatization of the Iberia airline (postponed several times over pilots' opposition, adverse economic conditions and failed acquisition talks). Together with the continued inflow of European funds, this provided Spain with extraordinary revenues that contributed to curb the fiscal deficit and reduce public debt, though the Spanish government's overreliance on housing as an economic locomotive generated a real-estate bubble due to a rise in speculation. The cash rounding resulting from the final replacement of the Spanish peseta by the euro on 1 January 2002 also led to a rise in the inflation rate.
Domestically, Aznar dealt with the mad cow crisis early into his second term (with the first confirmed case of the disease in Spain), as well as a diplomatic standoff with the United Kingdom over the HMS Tireless's presence in Gibraltar for repairs. The Gescartera affair in 2001 (a major financial scandal involving fraud, misappropriation of funds and influence peddling by the homonym investment company) saw the resignations of the then treasury state secretary and the president of the National Securities Market Commission. On the issue of immigration, Aznar's government reformed the Aliens Law to curtail some migrants' rights and introduce harsher entry restrictions, a faster deportation process, and tighter conditions for travel visas. An attempt by the government to tighten unemployment benefits and other working conditions through decree-law led to a general strike in 2002, forcing the proposal—later struck by the Constitutional Court of Spain in 2007—to be watered down. The Perejil Island crisis in July 2002, which saw a Royal Moroccan Navy squad temporarily occupy the uninhabited island, was resolved after a bloodless intervention by the Spanish military. Finally, a proposal for a water transfer from the Ebro river to south-eastern provinces to supply tourism and agriculture was criticized as poorly planned and met with mass protests, particularly in Aragon and Catalonia.
Terrorism became a major issue, with the ETA group conducting major attacks such as the killings of Ernest Lluch (a former health minister), the October 2000 Madrid bombing which killed a Supreme Court judge, or the 2001 Madrid bombing injuring 99. PP and PSOE signed the 2000 Anti-Terrorist Pact, and a new Political Parties Law was passed in 2002 which allowed the banning of the Batasuna party over its links and support to ETA's actions. The increase of counterterrorism cooperation with France and the European Union, together with renewed police action, eroded ETA's operational capacity. Concurrently, and in opposition to Aznar's hardline position against ETA violence, the Basque Nationalist Party under Juan José Ibarretxe sought to resolve the Basque conflict through sovereigntism and broad-based talks, a position endorsed by voters at the snap 2001 Basque election. Following failed talks with the Spanish government, Ibarretxe laid out a peace scheme in 2003—dubbed the Ibarretxe Plan—that envisaged a referendum to decide on a proposed reform of the Basque Statute of Autonomy which, if approved, would turn the Basque Country into an associated state on an equal footing with Spain (including a right to self-determination).
This period saw the controversial management of a number of crises by Aznar's government, with criticism over the perceived cover-up nature of its actions—frequently through denialism and diffusion of responsibility—negatively affecting its public standing and fostering a perception of arrogance in the exercise of power. The Prestige oil spill in November 2002 saw extensive damage to the coast of Galicia in what was described as Spain's biggest environmental crisis: the government's decision to tow the ailing wreck out to sea rather than allow it to take refuge in a sheltered port was seen as a major contributing factor to the disaster's scale. The Yak-42 plane crash in May 2003, with the death of all 75 occupants, saw a misidentification of bodies (with some remains being returned to the wrong relatives and others being mixed-up) as well as questions on the plane's poor condition and the pilots' readiness.
Internationally, the election of George W. Bush as U.S. president and the 9/11 attacks in 2000 saw Spain aligning closer to the United States, with Aznar backing Bush's missile shield, war on terror and invasion of Afghanistan, in exchange for U.S. support to Spain's fight against ETA's terrorism. Spain's rapprochement to Bush's United States and Tony Blair's United Kingdom, and their unsuccessful attempts to secure a new UN Security Council resolution that could lead to war—superseding Resolution 1441—culminated in the Azores Summit on 16 March 2003, which led to the subsequent invasion of Iraq under the alleged aim of disarming Saddam Hussein's regime of "weapons of mass destruction". The Spanish government's decision to intervene in the Iraq War proved highly unpopular among the public, sparking massive anti-war protests across the country. Aznar had also hinted at withdrawing from politics after two consecutive terms, a decision he confirmed at the 2002 PP congress, while also rejecting running for parliament. The first deputy prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, was selected to succeed him in September 2003.
Despite Aznar's growing unpopularity, the PP was able to come out of the 2003 local and regional elections with limited losses. The outcome of the regional election in Madrid was significant: it hinted at the formation of a left-wing coalition government in Spain's capital region, but the Tamayazo parliamentary scandal (seeing two PSOE legislators break party discipline) thwarted the regional PSOE leader's investiture and forced a repeat election in October in which PP's Esperanza Aguirre secured a majority. The 2003 Catalan election saw the Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC)—PSOE's sister party—oust the nationalist Convergence and Union from the regional government after 23 years of uninterrupted rule, with a tripartite cabinet between PSC, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Initiative for Catalonia Greens being formed under Pasqual Maragall. Maragall's government came under fire in January 2004 after it was unveiled that its deputy head, ERC's Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira, had held a secret meeting with ETA to negotiate a Catalonia-limited ceasefire, in what became known as the Carod affair. While Carod-Rovira denied all claims of deal-seeking, the public backlash prompted him to apologize and resign from his cabinet posts.
Overview Under the 1978 Constitution, the Spanish were conceived as an imperfect bicameral system.. summarizing . The Congress of Deputies held greater legislative power than the Senate, having the ability to grant or withdraw confidence from a prime minister and to override Senate vetoes by an absolute majority.. Nonetheless, the Senate retained a limited number of specific functions—such as ratifying international treaties, authorizing cooperation agreements between autonomous communities, enforcing direct rule, regulating interterritorial compensation funds, and taking part in constitutional amendments and in the appointment of members to the Constitutional Court and the General Council of the Judiciary—which were not subject to override by Congress..
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